With the rapid development and deployment of high-speed railway around the world, it has become imperative for service providers to provide broadband wireless access for passengers on trains moving at high speeds. During a journey up to several hours, passengers on any such train may desire to use various broadband wireless services including voice, email, web browsing, multimedia services, etc. The passengers may use user equipment (UE) such as smartphones, for example, to access various broadband wireless services.
In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, tracking areas (TA) are used as a way to track UE location in idle mode. A tracking area includes a cluster of radio base stations having the same tracking area code (TAC). A mobility management entity (MME) uses TA information when paging idle UE to send notification of incoming data transmission(s). The MME provides the UE with a list of tracking areas, or TA list, where the UE registration is valid. When the MME pages a UE, a paging message is sent to all radio base stations in the TA list.
FIG. 1 shows a scheme 100 of mobility management for a broadband wireless network for high-speed railway.
According to conventional scheme 100, the TA tracking area (TA) update for the wireless communication devices on a moving platform 150 may be carried out for all the wireless communication devices 140 on the moving platform 150 when the moving platform 150 enters into an overlapping region between two TAs. Accordingly, the time available for the TA update procedure for each wireless communication device on the moving platform 150 when the moving platform 150, TTAU, is in an overlapping region between two TAs is approximately 3.7 milliseconds, the calculation of which is as follows:
      T    TAU    =            L              V        ×        U              =                            200          ×          3600                          350          ×                      10            3                    ×          557                    ≈              3.7        ⁢                                  ⁢        ms            